Wherever he’s, George Steinbrenner should’ve smiled and nodded on the information of Bayern Munich firing their supervisor with three-quarters of the season gone. Not solely would which have reminded Massive Steinn of his “glory” days (clearly the Yankees didn’t regain their spot atop the baseball world till Steinbrenner calmed the fuck down), however so would the requirements that Munich apparently discover acceptable and unacceptable. Julian Nagelsmann acquired shitcanned after successful the Bundesliga final 12 months, and presently one level off the highest of the league and within the Champions League quarterfinals. This was not adequate on the Allianz Area, in some way.

However that is how issues take a look at a membership like Bayern when the membership has received the final 10 Bundesliga titles and didn’t must sweat all that a lot for any of them. All of a sudden being in a title race may sound all of the “battle stations” cries within the membership places of work… however it additionally looks like probably the most first-world issues of any membership on the planet. Although Juventus did fireplace Maurizio Sarri after he received the Serie A as a result of Cristiano Ronaldo instructed them to, and so they haven’t been shut since. Could possibly be a lesson there.

So what was Munich’s reasoning? There was a downshift of their performances this season for positive, however one wonders how a lot that’s Naglesmann’s fault. They’re down from 2.26 factors per sport final season to 2.08 this, thus the title race they’re mired in (although a few of that’s attributable to enchancment from Borussia Dortmund, the most recent workforce to go full Ewing Idea after the departure of Erling Haaland). The underlying numbers kind of inform the identical story. Whereas Munich’s aim distinction is +45, nearly on monitor with final season’s +60 after the entire season, their anticipated aim distinction has shrunk from 52.7 in 2021-2022 to “simply” 25.9 this season.

Maybe what scared the Munich higher-ups, in the event that they seemed this deeply, is that Munich have been wildly outshooting their metrics to date this season in assault. They’ve 72 targets from an anticipated targets depend of 53.2. There’s been an uptick in Bayern’s goals-per-shot and goals-per-shot-on-target with none improve within the quantity of probabilities or photographs they get. That’s been greatest exhibited by Jamal Musiala and Eric Maxim Choupo-Mouting each nearly doubling up their anticipated targets tally with their precise aim tally. There was some luck concerned (Choupo-Mouting is scoring on 77 % of the photographs he places on course for fuck’s sake), and possibly Bayern was afraid that luck would dry up within the season’s final two months.

You’ll be able to level to, nonetheless, Munich shedding Robert Lewandowski earlier than this season and his alternative, Sadio Mané, barely getting on the sector after the World Cup due to harm. If Munich solid a watch to Mané’s former teammates in Liverpool and noticed the ravages the 63-game marketing campaign of final season had wrought, they’d in all probability conclude they acquired barely broken items in Mane. It needs to be to Nagelsmann’s credit score that he’s been capable of cobble collectively a lot and not using a primetime central striker for a lot of the season.

A tough man to like

It’s exhausting to imagine that Munich would make this transfer that reeks of desperation so near the top of the season purely primarily based on metrics although, and with a lot to nonetheless lose. It’s not exhausting to see Nagelsmann guiding this workforce to a treble, which continues to be very a lot on. And so they may lose all three of these trophies as nicely, and there will probably be loads specializing in the change in supervisor ought to that occur.

From some experiences, Nagelsmann was fairly exhausting on his gamers, and that didn’t actually soften over his one-and-three-quarter-year tenure. Nagelsmann additionally had a behavior of bending his ways to that week’s opponents, which rubbed some gamers the incorrect means. In spite of everything, that is BAYERN MUNICH. You present up, do what you do, and make everybody else regulate to you. You don’t concern your self with the tendencies of the plebes. Or possibly it was simply this jacket.

Nonetheless, that was extra a behavior of his when at RB Leipzig, who did want the additional juice of being tactically versatile provided that they simply didn’t have the expertise that Munich had. At Leipzig, Nagelsmann would frequently bounce from a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 to the normal Crimson Bull set-up of a 4-2-2-2. Munich this season have virtually completely performed in a 4-2-3-1, which orbits the workforce across the energy of Joshua Kimmich and Leon Gortezka in midfield. Nagelsmann did swap to a three-at-the-back system for the primary leg in opposition to PSG, which noticed Munich stroll out of the Parc de Princes with a win and eventual development. He’d been utilizing that system extra within the league of late too. Is that what scared Bayern?

There have been additionally rumors that Nagelsmann by no means received over Manuel Neuer and Thomas Muller, two establishments on the roster. However they’re each nicely into their 30s, and Neuer is out for the season with an harm, so if that had been true how for much longer does Munich plan on catering to those two?

If it was all this, Thomas Tuchel is a humorous appointment then, given how a lot he favors a 3-4-3 system too. Tuchel as nicely has been recognized to drive his gamers nuts after a short time together with his rabid consideration to element. His groups had been additionally by no means recognized for being terribly dynamic in assault, and Munich have already got a water-tight protection. What precisely are they aiming for?

It’s additionally simply in regards to the worst-possible timing for a brand new supervisor. There’s presently a global break, that means Tuchel received’t get his full squad again to coach till Tuesday or Wednesday. Saturday sees the go to of Dortmund, the largest sport in Germany this season. 10 days after that’s the Champions League quarter in opposition to Manchester Metropolis, who simply dispatched Leipzig eleventy-billion to 1 or no matter it was within the final spherical.

This undoubtedly feels a bit just like the play the outdated “FC Hollywood” days. It’s a chilly, chilly world the place even the opportunity of solely having received 10 of 11 Bundesliga titles is taken into account a failure, however that’s apparently the deal at Bayern Munich.